Wyoming needs 20 more firefighters, consultant says

MLive.com FileWyoming firefighters train last year at the former General Motors stamping plant on 36th Street SW.

WYOMING, MI – The city could use as many as 20 more firefighters to improve “woefully inadequate” deployment, according to a consultant.

A report from the International City/County Management Association also recommends moving toward a public-safety department of cross-trained police and fire personnel, changing work schedules of full-time firefighters, and targeting high school students to recruit more paid-on-call part-time firefighters.

The latest ICMA report recommends that Wyoming reopen one of its four fire stations – a station on Gezon Parkway SW has been closed since 2004 – and estimates that could add $1.6 million in annual costs to the department, which has a $4.3 million budget.

“When looked at in totality, the data reveal that the current staffing and resource deployment model is woefully inadequate to provide timely fire protection to the community,” the consultants wrote. “Although these costs are prohibitive for the Wyoming Fire Department to staff at this level, maintaining current service and staffing levels has considerable risks as well.”

Consultants recommend that Wyoming could limit cost increases by partnering with Kentwood to staff a fire station on Division Avenue. They also suggest that the fire department negotiate with the firefighters’ union to add a 12-hour daytime shift, when most calls for service come in. That would change a firefighter’s work schedule from 50.4 hours to 56 hours per week.

Wyoming also “should consider creating a ‘partially consolidated’ public safety department comprised of individuals who may be either cross-trained as public safety officers or singly-trained as police officers or firefighters,” the report states.

“The success of a partially consolidated agency depends on having individuals work together as a team regardless of their specific training and that they are supervised by an individual who is trained in all skills,” it reads. “Thus, teams would be comprised of police officers, firefighters, and public safety officers under the supervision of a cross-trained supervisor. Ideally, this would occur with all team members working the same shift.

“As singly-trained personnel leave the agency, they can be replaced by cross-trained personnel.”

Among other recommendations in the 86-page report:

reclassify several positions - make a battalion chief into a deputy chief, make two lieutenants into firefighters and make the fire inspector a fire marshal